Planned layoffs could mean a department with least number of officers in almost 60 years

Apr. 21, 2013

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Smoke billows from the top of a three-story multi-family home as Cincinnati firefighters work to extinguish the fire in the 3400 block of Brookline in Clifton November 3, 2010. No one was injured, and the home was vacant, undergoing renvations. The fire started between the second and third floor of the structure. / The Enquirer/Gary Landers

Note on staffing totals: The Cincinnati Police Department doesn’t keep logs of staffing by year. Sgt. Louise Shields, supervisor of the personnel section, found some numbers in monthly staffing reports. The numbers also vary a lot, depending upon retirements, other departures and the timing of recruit classes.

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If 149 Cincinnati police officers get laid off this summer, as the city currently plans, the department will be smaller than it has been in almost 60 years.

For people who live, work and visit Cincinnati, that could mean the city focuses only on the basic service police officers provide – responding to 911 calls. That’s the one thing officers can’t stop doing.

The rest, like organizing prostitution stings and special targeted drug busts, experts caution, could disappear. Investigations could take longer if detectives move back to the street.

Just three years ago, the force had 1,135 officers; since then attrition – no new recruit classes and positions’ going unfilled – has cut the force to 969. The latest proposed cuts would reduce it another 15 percent, to 820.

That’s the equivalent of closing one of the city’s five police districts. District 3, for example, which covers the West Side, has 160 officers and is the city’s busiest.

After the cut, Cincinnati would employ 2.8 police officers for every 1,000 residents, about the same as similar-sized Pittsburgh, where the ratio is 2.9 officers to 1,000 residents. Now, with 969 officers, Cincinnati’s number is 3.3.

Cincinnati’s ratio would still be higher than in these other cities: Columbus and Dayton, both at 2.3; Akron, 2. Cleveland’s is higher, at 3.9.

City budget experts are trying to whittle down the layoff number. But they can’t go so far as to have the saved salaries outweighed by the payout of accrued vacation and other time saved. The accrual payout for the 149 is estimated at $10 million.

It’s a situation brought on by years of structurally imbalanced budgets and City Council decisions to spare police and fire personnel while most other things were cut. The two public safety departments use roughly two-thirds of the city’s operating budget, which faces a $35 million deficit for the next fiscal year, which starts July 1.

'Don't expect the same level of service'

City Manager Milton Dohoney planned to help fill that deficit with $25 million from the lease of city parking meters, lots and garages. But a coalition led by Councilman Christopher Smitherman, the local branch of the NAACP and COAST (Citizens Opposed to Additional Spending and Taxes) sued over the city’s enacting the lease as an emergency, got a restraining order, then collected signatures to put the issue on the November ballot. Those signatures are being counted now, but enough signatures have been validated to force a referendum.

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Without the parking money, Dohoney said as many as 344 people could be laid off, 149 of them officers and 118 firefighters. Officers hired as long ago as 2005 would be let go.

“Can you cut 149 officers? Sure, it’s doable,” said Tom Streicher, former Cincinnati chief and now a law enforcement consultant working on an audit of the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office, “but don’t expect the same level of service.”

The department doesn’t keep staffing numbers by year past 1995. But annual reports kept at the Cincinnati Police Museum said the last time Cincinnati had fewer than 820 officers was in 1955, according to Steve Kramer, museum director. The chief at that time, Stanley Schrotel, wrote in his annual report that 820 was deficient.

Cincinnati’s population then was just beginning to decline after hitting its peak in 1950 at almost 504,000. That was back before radar, before officers all had radios in their cars. They had to stop at callboxes along the street to call for help. There were 33 homicides that year, compared to 53 in 2012, and the force investigated just under 9,000 violent and serious offenses, compared to 21,973 last year.

By 1956, the ranks had gone up to 866, and the number hasn’t dropped below that since, Kramer said. The next year, 1957, the department landed on the cover of Life Magazine as a “model police force.” By the late 1970s, Streicher said, the complement totaled 1,250.

The impact of the cuts depends, Streicher and other experts said, on how the agency redeploys the officers it has left. Other cities have cut everything but the basics, i.e. patrol, and demoted supervisors back into patrol shifts. That means cutting back on everything but answering radio calls. That means less, or no, prostitution stings, warrants served or big, planned drug busts. The public might not notice those things missing right away, but eventually will, Streicher said, when neighborhood quality of life is affected.

For example: Cincinnati’s Violent Crime Squads target neighborhood problems that have drawn complaints from residents, often complaints about drug dealing. If those are cut, “that’s not going to happen anymore,” said Kathy Harrell, president of the Fraternal Order of Police.

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Perhaps most importantly, the cuts will take out the youngest, most recently trained and “the most eager, energetic” officers, said Alexander Weiss, a police consultant in suburban Chicago. “That’s unfortunate because they’re often the ones who are the most enthusiastic about their work.”

Layoff coming day before daughter due

Many officers declined to talk about the layoffs. Some said they feared retribution, others said they’d been advised not to express opinions publicly.

Kyle Strunk, an officer for seven years and a cadet before that, faces being laid off a day before his first child, a daughter, is due.

“One thing is certain, emergency calls will be here tomorrow,” he wrote in an Enquirer guest column earlier this month. “The only question is, who will answer those calls if we are cut? There are 149 police officers.... Who want to answer them. Now the question is: Will City Hall let us?”

Other cities where officers have been laid off have seen morale plummet, Weiss said, and sometimes work slowdowns by remaining ranks. Again, not an obvious change, he said, but one that could have a dramatic effect over time.

Streicher agreed. He experienced a police slowdown in 2001 when officers were upset about they perceived as a lack of support from City Hall and after three officers were indicted within a year for arrests that ended in suspects’ deaths. Arrests dropped 35 percent from the year before, and revenue from traffic tickets was down significantly.

Officers acknowledged they weren’t going out of their way to do things they didn’t absolutely have to do.

Neighborhood groups are waiting to hear more about what the police department plans to do to compensate for the cuts.

In Northside, “we love our officers,” said Martha Dourson, president of the community council. “We’re just waiting to see what happens.”

In Camp Washington, neighbors are working with police officers on the heroin epidemic, and on a new police youth program in the recreation center, said Joe Gorman, executive director of the Camp Washington Business Association.

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“We have a great relationship with District 5 and our neighborhood officer, John Boyle,” Gorman said. “We’d hate to lose that.”

Chief James Craig and other city officials say it’s too soon to say exactly how they’ll restructure the police department. In fact, officials aren’t saying much at all other than to hold two press conferences this month to stress they’re not bluffing.

“I don’t want to lose one officer, truthfully,” Craig told The Enquirer. “But I also understand the importance of balancing the budget. It is not the managers desire to lay off officers, but it’s a tough issue.... I’m not ready to reveal any plan because we don’t know.”

Councilman Charlie Winburn said he thinks the lack of outrage is because “people don’t believe it. They don’t believe it’s actually going to happen.”

Cincinnati’s layoffs are coming later than those of other cities, where layoffs happened in the thick of the recession.

Toledo laid off 75 police officers in 2009 but called them back and hired an additional 165 since 2010, for a total of about 580 now. Dayton’s staffing is back up now after a hiring freeze during a federal investigation over discrimination in testing. Ranks there dropped from 418 in 2009 to the low 300s last year. The city still saw a 15 percent drop in violent crime in 2011.

Dohoney has recommended layoffs in years past. Every time, council has saved police and fire jobs, cutting other things and borrowing from reserves. The city’s only layoffs in this economic downturn were 41 employees in 2010. Many of those were trash collection workers cut when separate yard-waste collection was canceled.

This time, Dohoney continues to stress, there is no other option. The parking plan was his rabbit-out-of-the-hat plan to save police and fire jobs. ■